Sailing to Byzantium
by meowll
Summary: Nothingness has its limits. Yuki-centric.


A/N: Some spoilers for The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

* * *

There are endless lights outside my window at night, city lights spreading like a web, like a disease at my feet and I've read poems about them, lines telling how wonderful they are and how alive the town is at night, when everyone's consciousness is heightened and yet oblivion sets in, a sudden liberation leaving them blind to themselves and careless to reality. I've read so much about it that I can reproduce anything, I can describe the night in the most beautiful words and give it colour and life on a blank page.

But I feel nothing.

I turn my back to reality, facing my room. There are four walls and their inside is empty, except for the small table that I sometimes serve tea at. They'd wanted to furnish it when I was sent here, they said that having furniture in your house is a part of being a normal highschooler. I refused. I had never experienced the material world before, but the idea of being surrounded by a multitude of differently shaped and coloured things with a variety of purposes bothered me.

Before I existed in my current state, I was a part of the Data Integration Thought Entity. The state I was in before I was separated from it is not something that can be described through any form of human expression. I believe that the best word to describe it is _whole_, but it is far from the genuine meaning that I am trying to convey.

I was a part of the mechanism, not at all differentiated from any of its many parts. I was one with the entity, working in synchronisation with it and I was intermingled with everything that had ever existed. I had no feelings and no mood. What I experienced was, at best, neutrality. I never felt nothing, and the feeling of no feeling was something that seemed like home.

Once again, human vocabulary limits me. But it is, perhaps, understandable why I did not want any unnecessary objects in my new terrestrial home. Abandoning unity for an endless variety of forms is not something simple, not even for someone like me, whose structure is not meant to encompass subjectivity.

It was difficult to adapt to this world as it is. At the beginning, I went outside as rarely as possible. All the forms, the neverending variation of objects and people made me nauseous. I would walk with my eyes closed, reaching out with my hands for any unknown obstacles. contracting time fabric only to reach my destination faster. I was dimly aware of the strange looks that people on the street were giving me, even though I could see nothing.

In the report that the Entity made, I was labeled with incipient dysfunctionality. A mental disease of sorts, but that was not the term used to describe deviations of humanoid interfaces. There was something wrong with me.

I had predicted that this would happen. They made me a recluse who does nothing but read all day, because they thought that I would be a convenient acquisition for Haruhi Suzumiya's group. They thought that such a girl would seem interesting to her, because of the common romantic conception that the silent always have something to hide, but they completely ignored the implications of a quiet, asocial personality, mainly its predisposition to deviations and disorder.

That is not to say that I have a soul, or anything of the kind, but I have been playing a pretense of humanity long enough to tell that human psychology is very fragile. The Data Thought Integration Entity had no way of knowing this.

Despite the reason for my chosen human form, Haruhi Suzumiya never gave me any attention. But I am an accessory, and knowing that I am present helps to keep her mood stable and avoid any possible disastrous event. As long as I do not experience any major glitches, I am a useful entity to her and to the world.

I sit down on one of the pillows on the floor. Before Haruhi Suzumiya, having nothing else to do, I spent most of my days like this.

It wasn't unpleasant. I quite enjoy doing nothing, thinking of nothing. It reminds me of my previous state, when everything lacked form and information flowed freely through my non-being. It's not exactly a feeling, but I lack other words for it- I sometimes miss those times.

It wasn't unpleasant, but after three years of sitting still, I had started getting tired of it.

I felt lonely.

Sometimes I would go in the room where Kyon and Asahina were sleeping. I would stop time suspension and sit there for a few minutes, with the price of the Entity noticing those few minutes in which seconds flowed freely in the interior of the room and the two were sleeping, not encumbered in a sped-up time capsule, but simply sleeping. They might remember the hazy half-consciousness of almost being awake, but they never mentioned anything to me.

I watched them sleep, observed their breathing and, for a few minutes, indulged myself in using my human imagination to think of how it would feel like to be real. At the end, when I closed the door behind me with a slow gesture, I felt more unreal than ever.

...but not so lonely anymore. I knew that I would meet him again soon.

I can't say that I was relieved when my incubation period was over and I finally started my activity, but it did feel different. My mind was occupied most of the time. I spent many hours in the company of human beings.

I observed them, but I didn't understand as much as I wished to.

I always read books, but all that they were useful for were the pieces of information that I could find between the fiction, the imaginary, the human.

I couldn't relate. It felt empty.

It didn't use to feel empty before, when I was alone and everything that was my existence was contained between a few walls and my main contact with the outer world was that window where I could see the city lights and admire their emptiness. But all the people and all the books made me feel like a stranger and I sometimes succumbed to that poor excuse of a feeling, wishing for something else, something more.

I could have talked more, but human language is such a limited way of communication that I didn't bother. Instead, I developed on my own internal language and in time, I started understanding more of what I was reading.

I discovered computer games. Sometimes I went to the computer club and watched everyone stare at me in awe as I tapped away at the keyboard, doing things that they couldn't even dream of.

I slowly started liking books, devouring story after story, drowning in fictional worlds that gave me, even if only for a few hours, the illusion of feeling.

I spent time in his company. I don't know why Haruhi Suzumiya chose him and I don't know why I did. In fact, I don't quite believe there is a reasonable explanation for this. He is simple, amusing, and I believe he is what humans call 'kind'. He has a beautiful mind that he rarely uses.

He is good company.

In time, I started enjoying life more than I was supposed to. I don't feel, but I understand. I don't exist, but I almost do. At one point, I knew that something had snapped and that I had changed.

The Data Integration Thought Entity labeled me as 'dysfunctional'.

I watch the city lights spread out below me, as empty and meaningless as ever before. They tell me nothing, a silence that is not a veil, but a blank. I don't wish for life. I only wish that I could wish for life, and that's enough.

I know exactly what I have to do.

I created a program that would allow him to take the decision for me, because I know that he likes the current world. He has proven it before, when he returned with Suzumiya from the closed space that she created.

I don't want to create a world where he would feel like a stranger. Not without giving him the choice. Because even if I cannot determine the exact data that will be included in the new world, I know that my subjectivity will not accept any other option. I will change the world, but he will remain the same.

I will recreate the known world into something where aliens, time travellers and espers don't exist and Haruhi Suzumiya is nothing but an ordinary highschooler with an overactive imagination. I will shake off every unnecessary detail in the current world, leaving it pure and unaltered. A world where I can be nothing else but myself.

I take a deep breath and I know that this is the only decision that I have to make. Everything leads to this moment. I have lived too long without living. Something is happening and it's not in my complete control, but I know…

…that I want to be real.

With a whimper, the world dies.

In a single second, I change everything. Worlds over worlds, future rewritten and a past less travelled to be carved in every single human being's memory.

Everyone but him.

The universe unfolds from my mind and I sit passively and watch as I create, like a poet whose pen has escaped from his reach from the moment when he layed it on paper.

Before I can realise it, nothing is the same anymore.

And as I drown deep in oblivion, I only hope that he will make the right decision.

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A/N: I hope that there weren't too many things that didn't make sense. I also hope that I managed to have a decent amount of in-character Yuki without everything feeling too bland, even though it probably did. Tell me what you think?


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